solid evangelists

When I was a freshman in high school, I attended a revival service for the youth/English speaking ministry. The speaker, Mark Cahill, came to talk about his new book, One Thing You Can't Do In Heaven. That one thing was evangelizing, or sharing the Christian faith. I cried as my dad drove me home. I didn't know why I cried at the point, except that it was sad, thinking how futile I was as a Christian.

He really emphasized reaching out to others, asking us, if you were to stand before God today, how many people would you be able to say you brought to Christ?

Now, looking back, it was sort of a bad question, because it's not like we're sharing our faith so we can gloat about how many "tickets to heaven" we sold, you know? And if we approached evangelism like that, we would just get lumped into the close-minded, "offensive" preachers that non-Christians are absolutely repulsed by.

But the reason why it struck a chord with me is I hadn't talked to anyone non-Christian seriously about my faith. And seriously, it was totally going against the grain of what I wanted to believe about Christianity - that it wasn't exclusive, that it wasn't just for the people born into Christian families being perfectly judgmental about those that weren't. By not saying anything to anyone and staying in my own PC bubble, I was being super-exclusive. 

But how could I? That's everyone's dilemma. No one wants to have shoved in his/her face, "You're going to HELL. REPENT." but at the same time, people point fingers at us for not sharing because it's like we're keeping some awesome secret all for ourselves.

So let me be up front for once. I believe that if you do not accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior and you do not turn to God the Father, you are going to go to hell. And I don't say this in a condemning manner, I say this in a matter-of-fact manner. This does not make me superior to you, nor does it make me happy to say it. In fact, I think my unreasonable crying as a shocked high school freshman was the basis of a heart for the lost.

Now, all this jargon-y terminology - "personal savior," "God the Father," "the lost" - it just doesn't make sense to non-believers. In fact, if I weren't Christian, I would seriously be like, okay, whatever. Go sing kumbaya and leave me be. So let me put it in simple terms.

I love you. As a friend, as a fellow human being, I love you. And I want to be able to spend the rest of eternity with you in heaven - where there's no poverty, no stress, no hurt, no shame, no death. The perfect world we humans wish we had? That's unobtainable on this planet. But I know of a place where it's possible, and I want to share it with you, plain and simple.

I love you. And to know that I am separated from you right now, even if we're in the same school, city, country, Earth - that breaks my heart. So let me share my faith with you out of love, nothing more. Nothing less.

That's what a solid evangelist would say, I hope. And that's why I love people who can do so with such conviction.

Verse:

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." (Galatians 5:6)